just look at the photos.

Days 91-95

Went shopping to ASDA, and managed to stock up on all the basics for A Weight Loss For Winners Special Diet (c) 2007

Branflakes
tinned fruit cocktail
cranberry juice
bananas
broken rice
onion
courgette
mushrooms
apples
carrots
chopped tomatos
mushy peas
(god, this is interesting)
tinned tuna
cottage cheese
pitta breads
reduced fat spread
potatos
peas
four pack of beer (ok, probably my only bad thing, everyones gotta have their vices!)


Here is a photo of my fave breakfast in the whole world, bananas, strawberries, rasins, blueberries, and branflakes, yummy!


Here is the photo of the meal at the indian ceremony i went to, I imagine it's not all that healthy, but when your meal is served in a heart shape box, who can refuse!


And this one, a picture of the queen in a indian temple made me chuckle.

Went to a BBQ on Saturday, night, lovely it was. We played a game of questions based on 50 questions in a Newspaper magazine interview. Mostly, who was your first kiss / biggest achievement type questions, a question for me was, 'what's your vice?' other people said Pizza, Drugs, I said cornbeef toasties, but it probably should have been Beer. I can't get enough, especially when it is free.
Much like free love and sunshine, burn me, burn me!

day 97 is week number 14 for Weightloss For Winners, so I am over half way through and by the guide I wrote down for myself I should be 85kg. I haven't been swimming for a few days because I am a bit low on the dough, and so haven't managed to weigh myself, I would be surprised if I was as low as 85 kg.

I have included some of my mum's best recipes below, if like me, losing weight seems like a bit too much like an inconvenience, then follow these simple steps for some of the best English cake recipes in the world ever....


LEMON CAKE

6ozs (170 g) caster sugar 6ozs (170 g) margarine 10ozs (275g) self raising flour 3 large eggs 2 lemons a little milk 3 dessertspoons of granulated sugar for topping 8inch round cake tin with loose bottom – well oiled

Cream sugar marg and grated rind of one lemon together

Add eggs and beat really well

Fold in flour and milk to make very soft mixture

Put into cake tin and cook Elec160C gas 5 for 40 mins or until skewer comes out of centre clean

While cake is cooking grate remaining lemon rind and juice of both lemons into small bowl and reserve

Immediately cake is cooked remove form tin and put into centre of a piece of kitchen foil. Bring foil up around the cake sides

Put granulated sugar into lemon juice and rind, just a couple of quick stirs and spoon over hot cake.

Leave to cool (but hot lemon cake is scrummy)

Keeps very well in an airtight tin for a couple of days, stored in a cool place. If too warm the cake turns mouldy very quickly. It never lasts that long!!!!!


ROCK CAKES

8ozs (225g) self raising flour 3 ozs (75g) demarara sugar 3ozs (75g) marg 1 tespoon mixed spice all into a bowl rub in fat to all dry ingredients. Add 1 egg and about 3-4 tablespoons of milk. Stir in 3 ozs (75g) sultanas

Fork into lumps on a greased baking sheet cook about 15 to 20 mins 160C. Eat while warm.


FLAP JACK

8ozs (225g) oats 4ozs (100g) marg 2 heaped tablespoons of golden syrup 2 ozs (50g) demarara sugar

Melt syrup, sugar and marg in saucepan. Stir in oats. Press into a grease flat tin. Cook 20mins Ele 160c

Can add nuts and raisins.to that. Or grated apple


ELDERFLOWER CORDIAL

One big bowl full of white elderflower heads. Add Three quarters pound - 12ozs (325g) granulated sugar. 30g of citric acid.( you can get it at a chemist) 3 lemons juiced and put rinds in bowl too.

Boil a big kettle of water 2Ltrs and pour over the top. Stir until sugar is melted, leave until cold. Strain and bottle in a lemonade bottle. Use as much as required at a time diluted with water , tonic water or lemonade.

Food weight crazy time!

Days 66-90

Up down big small, good breakfast, bad breakfasts, swimming loads, not swimming at all. Wobble Wobble, no Wobble Wobble. Where is it all going/coming from, where is it all going to? Has Fatman Lost his way? Can you lose weight with no money? Does going to the market to buy cheap veg and then being short changed when you give someone a 20 pound note some sort of CRAZY OUT OF THIS WORLD Karma?

Ying Yang Flib Flab.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans, and a belly is what you get when you forget to blog, and diet.

God it's so difficult to keep on track, the actual details, swimming, eating well, easy peasy, its all those other bits, trying to find a healthy snack in a shark infested menu at the posh restaurant. Avoiding eating a pizza that someone has lovingly cooked for you when you arrive at their house. Avoiding all you can eat (Free) breakfast buffets, when your skint (I can't). Forcing yourself to drink white wine spritzers instead of devouring a lovely hand crafted pint of blacker than you heart Beer.

It reminds me of a scene in the Rock (1996)

Stanley Goodspeed: I'll do my best
John Mason: Your "best"! Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen.

So the question is am I fucking the prom queen or am I doing my best?

If your not a winner (weightloss or otherwise), or have to entertain the idea of winning or losing, then you have most certainly lost.

“PMA The philosophy of having a positive mental attitude is the belief that one can increase achievement through optimistic thought processes. Having a vision of good natured change in the mind.”

I know of a friend that plans her meals two weeks in advance on an excel spread sheet - mental attitude? Is that really what it takes? Making little / no room for manoeuvre. What ever happened to the darling of last minute dot com, Spontaneity? Or variation? What happened to Mr and Miss, lets go crazy! Did they get fat and poor?

Am I a monkey for corporate spin? Am I the ultimate consumer (£+food), caught between I want and I need. Bouncing between scraping by and scraping the ice cream bowl?

Ergh, I give up.

(p.s on a slightly less self involved melodramatic note at sometime this month i was 89.5kg (= good), hang on that's still self involved, argh!)

WLFW not WLTF or WLTM or MILF

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FAT SPOT SUN SPOTS DOT TO SPOT

42-48

Another week flies by in the Weightloss for winners office, and we have not been pigging out on chocci biscuits, we have swapped beer for wine, we have steered clear of brothels, gambling dens, warewolves, mad drunks, and large cakes. However due to illness going the office, we didn't make it too the pool, instead we were snorting paracetamol, and downing glasses of orange juice.

So team sprit was low and we didn't make it to the scales in the pool, thus as we speak the team are weight-less, floating through a vortex of the unknown, until tomorrow morning, when we throw on our matching red speedos and head for the last great cornerstone of british society, the baths, where there is the holy scales.

In total, we have probably loss half a stone. which ain't bad going. Hopefully we should be about 89.5 kg, but that might be wishful thinking, considering the weekend was yet another booze fest. [maybe ya'll should cut down on the beer, E.d)

We cooked a curry picking off the caterpillars and the bits of rotting veg in the cupboards, and made a nice "healthy" coconut curry. After our tuckker one of the gang notices that the coconut milk, is 28.5 grammes of fat per 100ml the pot was 400ml so 114 grammes of fat per pot, blergh!

You Win Some, You Lose Some, You Give Some Away

Day 35 - 41

The Stag Weekend

We tried the local cuisine, KFC for breakfast, true Stagg doo class. I haven't had a KFC for ages, and it wasn't very satisfying, just a really fluffy sort of feeling, like they had pumped air into it, AERO style. Absolutely no healthy options there, not sure they even had any veggie options, but then what does one expect from a restaurant, which has both, 'fried' and 'chicken in it's title. I don't think fast food outlets have the same pressure on them to 'go 'el-feey' as they do in the UK. but then with a stagg sized head ache, salad would not suffice. When ever I see people eat KFC it always looks like a vultures eating their prey, I really like it for that reason, no pretense, just straight forward, mastication. salad nicoise anyone?

Went into a restaurant, and one of the party says in english and I quote,"oi, mate, have you got any real food, like a full english?", the poor waiter had no idea what he was on about, needless to say, our mate orders lamb chops and chips. I thought I would go for the healthy option, a veggie paella, but when it came it was it was swimming in oil, blergh. It was like the time I was round a friends house and his mum cooked me some burgers (mum's gone to Iceland!), and they were so full of fat that when i bit into it the shock of all this hot grease hitting my lower lip, nearly made me puke, so i through it over the next door neighbors garden and got a right telling off, naughty me.

Went to a great kebab house simply called 'Pitta' a very nice kebab house, not as greasy as a proper english kebab.

For some very strange reason it was decided that to get to the bar quicker (a few of us got off at the wrong stop) we would jog, 'soccer training' style to the bar, "one is touch the floor with your left hand, two is touch the floor with your right, three is do a header" all whilst running along. still not sure quite why, it just felt right.

Manage to avoid the general stick from the guys about being on a 'diet' whist consuming pints, there were far more interesting things happening like people getting pick pocketed by prostitutes, or people puking on the tube. fank gawd. I imagine if it was a slightly more serene holiday, my non-dieting activities would have come more under the spot light.

I had a dream of going swimming during the weekend to burn off some of the booze, I didn't manage to much swimming as the water was bloody freezing! I lasted about 2 minutes, in there.

anyway, back to normal now, fruit, 'lite' drinking, branflakes, etc etc.

my original aim for the end of week 5 (next saturday) is 89.5kg, according to my plan in my first post all those many days ago, I am not sure how likely that is, due to the stagg weekend, but will see how the excercise and (the belly) goes.

Went swimming and weighed in at 90kg on wednesday before the stagg, awesome!

Weighed myself Friday before the Stag weekend as I was about 90 - 91kg, (was using a friends scales, and they weren't very accurate they are, lean one way and your 12 stone the other way 14 stone, you get idea).

After the weekend I felt a little bloated, but I think it will be quite easy to lose the weight as it is primarily booze belly, rather than hardened fat.

DAY 34 in the big blubber house

day 34

Cornflakes bananananananan and rasins for brekkie

lunch - whole meal rye bread salad + small amount of feta

dinner - pasta - yogurt (low low low fat stuff) strawberries, raspberries and tangerines.

going swimming tomorrow, well excited! I will be interested if I am still 92kg, ok, I will actually be annoyed...lets see.

You don't have to say you love me.

17-33

Summer is here, the soft kiss of the sun on your face the passing of sheep shaped clouds, bergh!

Went for a 10 mile hike in the Derby dales, it was great! lovely air.
Went swimming Wed/Sat still 92kg in weight both times.

At the moment I am doing lots of exercise and eating loads of fruit. Breakfast and lunch are well easy to do, skimmed milk with fruit and bran flakes, easy! Lunch, low fat stuff and salad, easy peasy. Even making evening meals at home is easy enough, but eating out and drinking the right things are a right ass, I think I can do the healthy lunch and breakfast on a permanent basis. But dinner and booze, thats another question. Went out for dinner and it all the menu had lots of fat in it. Salad with deep fried rubbish, salmon with cheesy fried dirt, grrrr

Its going to be a lot more difficult than I had hoped, not like I thought it was going to be easy, just that I have acquired the feared 'office worker' syndrome, diet starts tomorrow/ its only one / just this once / its naughty etc etc. I guess its about will power. Its just so bloody difficult to keep on track, with people bringing you stroop waffles ( syrup biscuit type things) from the netherlands, because you liked them before the 'regime'.

Its also the main reason I post less now, because its embarrassing! ah, well thats what I wanted I suppose.

I got 'caught' eating a bread, cottage cheese and pickle sandwich, I was hungry! I had a
shed load of fruit at lunch but it just don't fill you up like a good hunk of baked dough.

Went to the lovely ALDI and bought german whole-meal rye bread which should be a nice replacement for bread.

See how I do this week. (yes I know, only losers 'do there best', winners go home and **** the prom queen)

ah well, such is life.

Dangers of Step Aerobics

days 11-16

Creiky, been a busy bee this week, oout and aboot. Missed swimming on wednesday and tried to go on friday when the pool is shut, doh! As a penalty, I had to do Rosemary Conley's - The Best Rosemary Conley Workout In The World ... Ever! If you ever get the chance to see it its well worth it. There is Rosemary, with her buddies all doing the exercises, there is a lady to the left who is super fit and a older lady to the right doing slightly less energetic bouncing around. The lady to the left is a 'Julia' type person from George Orwell's 1984, smiling and over energetic. Rose tries her best to smile all the way through the exercises, the smile drifts from 'cheese' to 'near grimace' and back again, made in a few takes one presumes, its impossible to smile for that long. The rest of the cast remain smiley faced throughout ( over 60 minutes of action packed smiling). It was fun to do the video, projected in my front room, so it felt a little like I was being given orders by a vertically challenged uman' bean. Rose is a kind of mumsy librarian, authoritative saying 'do the box' or 'arms over'. It got to be a little annoying as she's constantly on to the next move, and combining, swing-your-arms-right-round with step-forward and back, the speed that it all changes around makes it very difficult to catch up. after 'two large circles with your arms and step to the left twice' and your shaking hands with the pot plant on the windowsill and the pot plant is shaking hands with your cream carpet, i mean, honestly! How big do they think peoples front rooms are?

But anyway it was good fun, in a embarrassing sort of way, i never actually thought of people actually doing it in there front rooms in front of the telly after Eastenders or the pub or something.

Went a' walking in Derbyshire, did about 10 miles, lovely, lovely.

Because I didn't go swimming this week, I don't know what weight I am. The shape of my hips have changed, I can't rest my arms on the fat bits. My belly has grown a little due to having a few beers and a pizza, argh, I thought it was going to be easy. Just got soo sick of diet coke and mixer, blergh. anyway, if I am back swimming again this week, i think I can work off this weeks over indulgences.

When I was a kid we once had to do Step Aerobics at school, I don't know to this day why they were making kids do step Aerobics, anyway, me and my friend steve were getting a little bored of left up, right up, left down, right down, left up, right up, left down, right down, and decided that we could improve step aerobics by doing it quicker, and quicker, and quicker, until I miss placed my foot on the step and landed with all my weight on my little foot. I broke the bone just before the little toe, ouch. I got taken home and had to wait for my mum to take me to hospital. When we got there this horrible nurse lady gave my foot a massage in a 'does this hurt' kinda way, yes it bloody did! We get the foot x-rayed and sure enough its got a break in it. I get a plaster cast on my leg, and after about a week the cast starts to break around the heel and down the sides, so I go back in to hospital and have a new one put on, and a week later that breaks to. My Dad decided that he could improve greatly on the hospitals pitiful excuse for a cast, and fibre-glasses both legs, (fiberglass being the stuff that the bottom of boats are often made from!) I chose to decorate it in a nice sea blue and algae green, spray paint, it was a master piece. That cast never fell apart!. When we finally went back to have it removed the doctor freaked out 'I have got to get this off before my boss sees', but it wasn't him who put it on....there are somethings you will never quite understand, and that is a mystery, that will stay with me for the rest of my years.

Can bowling count as exercise?

breakfast - cardboard flakes, fruit
lunch - wrap, low fat cottage cheese etc
dinner - not had it yet.

Today, I feel like I should be doing more. I was going to do exercise on Sunday but it was rainy, so couldn't go walking and I had already done swimming on Saturday. Gym? you have to be inducted 'Gym Inductions - on Saturday, when the moon is half and the wind is in the north- easterly direction' thanks, not much use at 2pm on Sunday. So I kind of feel like I have missed a exercise session. I might just go and run around a bit, chase small children, or cars, that could be fun, 'no wait! my hands caught in your doooooooor!' or something. and when I get caught by the police, I can tell them that I am doing excercise, and they would have to prove me wrong, and it will be all so funny, and in the end the police people will be laughing, coz its all so weird, and i say, maybe arrest all joggers, and they say, because 'they go round and round and round' and we will all sing Blur, and forget about all this silly nonsense about being arrested for chasing cars, and we will all be best mates and go down the pub. The End.

fat-tains blog supplementary.

Jeans. My jeans don't fit. They never did. shortish legs. massive thighs, normal
waist, means that all my jeans are saggy in the ass, and probably a size too big round the waist, just so they don't crunch, ahem, the inner thigh.

I wore some trousers with bulldog clips down the back and I looked way cool! Well sort of, It was really odd to see the shape, as a bloke you never see the real shape, with big shirts and ill fitting jeans. It looked all drain pipe like, just like the cool kids in the indy bars.

Saw a bloke in the pub the other day, and he was huge, like a big walking pyramid, and i thought poor bloke and then I thought, no that's rude to assume that, he is unhappy because he wears shirts large enough to be a tent. Then I thought oh no, I think that he is wearing a tent that's just as rude as thinking he should be unhappy coz' he's huge. Then I got distracted by a passing moth or something, maybe a shaft of iridescent light.

Was served by a bloke who must have been 7ft tall, he was absolutely huge, and the name on the cash till console in a you-are-served-by way said 'Stretch'. I mean, honestly, do you really need to point it out? And then, get this, another bartender came over who was as tall and even wider! I wasn't served by him so i never found out what his name was maybe something like, 'really big bloke' or maybe 'large', or 'My parents are giants and i am a giant toddler, lost on the way to the pay pit'. But something descriptive I imagine, my name would be 'slightly fattie' just in case there was a confusion at the bar and the chicken tikka with rice got mixed up with the bangers and mash with half a cider, and then A) they would know who to blame B) I could differentiate myself from huge and stretch, so that people would see me as an individual, not just someone who was smaller that the really big bartenders. But I will never work in that bar with huge and stretch, so I guess i don' t need to worry.

You're the One for me, fatty
You're the One I really, really love
And I will stay
Promise you'll say
If I'm in your way
You're the One for me, fatty
You're the One I really, really love
And I will stay
Promise you'll say
If I'm ever in your way
A-hey

All over Battersea
Some hope; and some despair
All over Battersea
Some hope; and some despair
Oh ...


You're the One for me, fatty
You're the One I really, really love
And I will stay
Promise you'll say
If I'm in your way
You're the One for me, fatty
You're the One I really, really love
And I will stay
Promise you'll say
If I'm ever in your way
A-hey


All over Battersea
Some hope; and some despair
All over Battersea
Some hope; and some despair
Oh, oh ...


You're the One for me, fatty
You're the One I really, really love
And I will stay
Promise you'll say
If I'm ever in your way
A-hey


You're the One for me, fatty
You're the One for me, a-hey-hey
A-hey
A-hey
A-hey
A-he-he-he-hey

WEIGH IN WEIGH OUT

day 8/9

So, the first full week of my getting fit experiment and I have lost 1.5kg which is great considering i was going for 0.5kg a week. I am better at swimming, can now swim a mile with not to much stress.

I was told by a good friend JRF, to cut out the bread about two years ago, to lose weight, so finally i have. Before the regime i would often have 2 slices for toast and then two rounds of sandwich for lunch with cheese and mayo etc etc, and possibly a pizza late at night. bergh!

The diet coke drinks are now making me very sick, so am trying to vary it with gin+ slimline tonic or wine. Not great but better than a pint.

I am also allowing more leniency with the diet as I am way over target at 1.5kg, the amount of exercise seems to cancel out any drinking that I am doing.

It was really windy today and i didn't get pushed over so I still have some way to go.

sat breakfast - carboardflakes and fruit
sat dinner - veggie mush with rice and pork chop

sun breakfast - cardboard flakes and fruit
sun lunch - Salad sanwich, low fat cheese + a meaty snack thing from ALDI
sun dinner - fish and boiled potatoes

life at 1 mile and hour

day 6/7

Went swimming and did 1 mile! 50 lengths. Weighed in at 92 kg which means I have lost 1kg in only a few days. Snacked on large amounts of fruit, and did 10 press ups, squats and sit ups. So feelin' alright! It was difficult but I didn't feel as tired like on wednesday. The other thing I have noticed is the colour in my face, its more healthy and reddish, rather than white with dark eyes. Amazing.

I worked out why i couldn't get up in the mornings - My house mate and me decided that it was summer and we didn't need the heating on in the mornings, and we would turn off that wasteful boiler. Couldn't hardly open my eyes. anyhoo thats fixed.

In sort of celebration of losing 1kg I went out and drank loads of free booze, which I needed to do, wine and sprits mainly, rather than the fizzy stuff. Which was a shame in diet terms, but i really felt like it, normality slips back in.

Woke up with a rather large hangover and the shakes, so decided that I would eat a huge 'sub' type sandwich, it was wonderful, pure joy.

Snacked on more fruit, including some larger-than-they-should-be strawberries.

Might go for a cycle tomorrow, as my pects still hurt from Thursdays swimming.

Why doesn't human poo make good compost?

Why doesn't human poo make good compost? Is it too acidic? Not fluffy enough, like er, horse shit? or is it that we are too good at taking out the good stuff? Or is it because we eat meat and dairy products? And if so is monkey poo bad for the earth?(are monkeys veggie?) would vegan poo make better compost?

Honey nut cornflakes, almost 50% sugar. "Cornflakes with your sugar sir?"

I am looking forward to tomorrow, swimming in the morning, 50 lengths is a mile, I did 40 last time, maybe just maybe I can do it. Doing a mile is far cooler than 40 lengths. Breaststroke only, don't think I can manage front crawl yet. Might even try a few of the recommended 'press ups, sit ups, squats etc', but could hardly get out of bed this morning, I don't know if its to do with the weather or the diet, but its been really difficult to get up recently, and generally feel more tired during the day. Gonna get shed loads of fruit tomorrow.

Low fat, what a fix. Went to Weatherspoons, (actual this time) because I was in another city not because I need to go to the pub everyday. Five bean chill, only 5% fat! and then it comes with salty tortilla chips (which I didn't eat) I am sure these can't be low fat. Tad misleading, perhaps?.

Hopefully going to do badminton on the weekend, easy exercise!

Breakfast - cornflakes
lunch - reduced fat cottage cheese, riveta crisp things, salad, (no dressing), fruit juice.
Dinner - five bean chilli
snacks - coffee (i was driving) and orange and two bananas

Real Men Don't eat Quiche

day 4

Breakfast - Cardboard flakes and cornflakes (mixin' it up because I am running out of the cardboard)
Lunch - Wrap with two eggs - is this bad?
Dinner - Lean german sausage and olive oil mash (tastes better than it sounds)

In the pub again today, I must really love it there, had a full fat coke, ordered incorrectly, i wanted a DIET COKE, but felt all shy because I asked someone else to get it. "hey do you want a drink?" "Yes, I will have half a diet coke", "hee, hee, hee" as my mate walked to the bar. There is something inherently funny about a young male ordering a half of diet coke. I mean my friends not a nasty person. Just even the thought of me having a HALF with Diet in it brought a titter/snigger. bastard (lower case because I don't really mean it).

I have a stag weekend coming up soon and I think the diet may have to, for the sake of my masculinity, take a break. "Beers all round lads? and TWO for the STAAAAAAAAG!" "(make mine a vodka and diet coke)" "WHAAAT!" and so on and so on you get idea. They're just incompatible, diets/stag weekends. But the question is, how does one take a break, do i starve myself before the weekend? Do i run up and down the stairs instead of taking the lift, using the unlikely childs game of "beeeetttcha!" as a reasoning to get all sweaty on a night out ? This will be a calorhoriffic holiday. Beer, beer, beer, pizza, beer, fry up, pizza, beer. Wama'gonnadoooo? Its likely to put me back a week or two on the old weight loss programmme. If i was perhaps going on the holiday with my mates it might be ok, i could get away with, you know, drinking less but, on a Stag do its all about over eating, farting and beer, beer, beer till your sick and maybe then a strip joint (god no!).

When lads are about, any sign of weakness becomes a huge joke, like vultures watching over a dying man in a desert, ready to swoop in and push him head first into the sand. I have faith in my friends not to be complete tossers, but its like going along and drinking water. I really don't know what to do. I have until easter weekend to come up with a sneaky plan. Yes, if i was a real adult, I would stick to my guns, let them have their laughs, their fun, and let them get over it, but I don't want to be the centre of attention, not on a stag doo anyway.

Yesterday I was explaining my programme to some friends, I was explaining that you know, I felt less bloated. "how long have you been doing it for" , "oh three days" "Pa hahah! I can see the weight falling off!" it's kind of funny, but then also its getting to be a bit annoying. I specified that 'I probably hadn't lost any weight yet'. why should it be so odd to try and lose a bit of weight? I have a few people, say oh yeah "I'll join you" in quite a throw away sort of way, in that they're downing pints whilst discussing the merits of a balanced diet. I mean, I like being the funny guy, but I really didn't set this one up as a joke. Maybe its funny because its so odd. Maybe it's funny because the way I approach it, or who I am. Maybe I shouldn't tell everyone, maybe I should be a closet dieter! But in effect telling people I know is away of putting pressure on myself to keep with the programme. I am looking forward to Saturday, to see if the programme has made any change to my weight at all, see if all the decisions and all the humiliation and all the diet coke have been worth it.

Sushi and smudgy glasses

day three

Does moving heavy stuff down three flights of stairs count as exercise? Well I did that today.
Went for lunch at a fake weatherspoons, the menu was full fat. One of the salads, had reduced fat vinaigrette (good) with 'normal' mayonnaise (bad, bad) WHY! Completely ridiculous. So I browsed across the menu, a jacket potato, that'll be good for me. Topping options, cheese, bacon and cheese, tuna mayo and cheese, beans and cheese, cheese and cheese, block of deep fried lard with cheese. AARGH! I had to go for beans (no cheese, please), bringing on the sort of pity that you had for the spotty kid at school that 'couldn't' eat any food containing the letter 'm' or anything round. When it came it was tiny, like about the size of a squashed tennis ball, i nearly shed a tear. I am used to at least new born baby sized potato, with 3 fillings all uniquely opposed in flavour, green curry, tuna mayo and cream cheese, yesp please! This was the most depressing episode of my slimming career so far. I had it with a apple juice, which was yummy, but served in a glass which was warm and had red lipstick on, by an annoying bloke eating red rope sweets, I mean, honestly, it was like yoof club in there. Although, the lady who also (part served me they we're all over the shop) served me was nice, small waist, which er, made my mind wander a little from the warm glass, I wondered if the soft red smudgy lipstick was in fact a loving gift to me from her, in the hope that in some small way our lips would be touching even if, it was never meant to be. Then she handed the bloke with the silly red rope a clean glass to give to me, my dreams and hopes shattered, the realisation that she was just doing her job and i was just another man holding a warm smudgy glass.

For dinner i had sushi, which was great! thanks, no tempura for fattie though. and er more diet coke (blergh!).

MATLOCK BATHS

day two

So, last night was the first 'drinking' night, were usually i would get completely bladdered on 7 pints or so (depending on start time) and get a pizza on the way home. I had four rum and diet cokes, and no pizza after. The taste of the rum made the fake sugar in the coke taste nicer, so it wasn't as bad as previously imagined, and I mixed the drinks i was having with a couple of pints of water throughout the night, admittedly this was more a money saving technique than anything diet related.

I figured that four rum and cokes, even if 'diet' can't be dieter's friend, so went walking in the hills of Derby. Fresh air too, great!

Breakfast - cardboard flakes with banana and skimmed milk
Lunch - 1/3 baguette with cottage cheese lettuce and choritzo slices, and asda puffed rice thai 'good for you!' thingys.
Dinner - yesterdays Pasta (I make it sound so bad, it was great!) with low fat greek yogurt on pineapple. (I make it sound great, it was bad! the Pinapple was old)

After the walk we went to Matlock Baths, a kind of seaside resort without any sea, just a river, it has all the arcade and ice-cream parlors you need for a good seaside town. Perhaps Matlock Bath was built just incase Brighton or Bournmouth get bombed by Al keida and his mates. The people still need penny arcades and Ice Cream! Or maybe is a weird quirk in environmental planning , just in case the lower half of england gets washed away, by rising sea levels; there will still be the mighty Matlock Baths - On - Sea.

Matlock Baths also has a great hairdresser called..wait for it..."I am Spartacuts!" genius, pure genius.

Matlock Baths is certainly dieters hell, pubs, fish and chip restaurants and ice cream parlors, oh yeah and the odd motorbike shop thrown in for some sort of Feng Shui balancing act. "No sir you need, three chippies for every bike shop, or otherwise positive energy will flow out of the town, and the confused customers will end up in Derby" "I can't let that happen, let there be chippies"

But I managed to avoid, the chippies, and just have a pint of diet coke in the pub. There must be more on offer in pubs which is low in bad stuff aside from water and diet coke? I can't imagine that the J20s are good for you. I got very excited when I realised that summer drinking diet style can include Gin and 'slim line tonic'. Drinks for winners!

I still feel a little odd doing this whole slimming thing, it does feel very setup for women, blokes I suppose just have heart attacks. But why the bias towards women, why the pressure on women to look slim or more importantly the lack of pressure on men to be healthy? Maybe its the choice of words, Slimming, Dieting, Getting fit, Exercising, 'going to the gym' all have slightly different connotations, but essentially meaning the same thing. Maybe there is a pressure on men to beef up rather than lose fat. something to do with gaining and losing? gambling? sorry for the psudo tenius links, just trying to work things out.

I guess part of me likes the feeling of going 'on a diet' as a young man, that slightly awkward conversations you have with people in which their first thoughts are that you are making them part of some elaborate joke. It almost feels (one assumes of course!) like some sort of cross dressing, using the language of middle aged women's magazine, lose a dress size! lose four pounds in four days! my brother killed my son with my cat!

So theoretically yes I am slimming, there's a nice outfit that i must simply have for the summer. In the pub the blog came up, and it was suggested that perhaps 'slimming' is the ultimate metro-sexual statement. But I guess that its a statement, rather than 'normal', if a middle aged woman who works in an office is slimming, its hardly a statement, more an occupational hazard. So there.

DAY ONE

Started the day with 40 lengths at the local pool, followed by cardboard flakes and skimmed milk, with bananas, which was in the end actually tasty. I have heard that exercising before you eat means that your body has to burn off stored fat, rather than sugar from your meal. It could be a load of ol' crap, but it meant that I felt like i really was hungry by the time i got back for breakfast. Weighed myself at the Swimming pool - 93 kg - 14 st 8.6 lb.

Lunch was Tuna Nicoise wrap with oolong tea.
dinner - pasta.

it took me about 50 minutes of pure swimming to do the 40 lengths, after the swimming i felt completely knackered. Surely I can't be that unfit. Next time i think i will try and do it in 45 minutes to get a sense of progression and achievement. When I was in the pool there was a lady about 40-ish, swimming along with her mouth open, which was really off putting, i couldn't help but imagine all that chlorine, that had been around my feet in her mouth, ergh! I am sure some people would pay good money for that sort of service, 'essence of young lads sweaty foot bathed in clorine'. Maybe she knows this and was very clever about the whole thing and worked out that if she goes along to the swimming pool at 10am she can get the whole thing for free.

Apologies, if you are open mouth lady and you actually have a medical problem. If you don't then you should be ashamed of yourself, or at least bung me a fiver when you get out of the pool.

going down the pub in a mo, but i will keep to diet coke and vodka, is that what dieters get pissed on? Maybe i will just have a little tipple, not go mental.

"Rum and Diet Coke is the appealing choice for weight-watchers at about 110 calories. Rum and Coke has 240 calories" (nicked from http://www.travellady.com/Issues/Issue69/spirits.htm)
I think its really nice of coke to re-brand diet coke, for men like me who couldn't possibly buy a can of diet coke, but coke 'Zero', now thats manly and cool and all my friends won't laugh at me for drinking it. I wonder if they will provide this service in a pub so i can continue to lose weight with out feeling like a middle aged female office worker, on a diet coke break. They could even put it through the same pipe, from the same box at no extra charge. No need for messy extra buttons! profits up!

The introduction...

The challenge: To lose two stone in six months.

I have always been a big chap, and come from a large family, so being rounded is perhaps part of my makeup as a uman' bean, and my mental image of myself, is as a large man. Even perhaps being over weight could be part of my personality? I like the idea of the body being a little more flexible, I have been proportionally been around the same body size, for ever, i would like to perhaps have a slightly different relation to my fleshy casing, or be able to pushed around by the wind a little more, or what ever it is that skinny people do that large people can't.

I don't have a big hang up about being over weight, i feel getting slimmer is something that i need to try, like lawn bowls or origami, I mean, there is always the possibility that I might lose weight from the wrong places, argh my shrinking rist!

If i do lose the weight, It will be a real joy to go into H&M and not feel like a right idiot when i ask, "do you have jean in a 36 waist - 32 leg?" , "erm, sorry mate we don't do those sizes , you will have to go to Marks and Spencer and look at the fat old man with beer gut range" I have to buy my jeans from Marks & Spencer, its a true story.

As a kid being large had its advantages, in replacement for strength, i would always win at bundles and grappling, I was also very good a cuddles, you can't feel the bones! According to my friends I was never huge, just erm, 'big boned'. I remember at middle school, the other kids chanting, 'co'mon Brucie show us your flab, show us your flab', in the changing rooms, but the chants were never abusive or nasty, it was friendly kid banter ( or maybe i fabricated a large fantasy world to deal with the onslaught of abuse?), in response i would dance along the wooden beams of the changing room seats doing a sort of chuffle-shuffle type dance. My belly button even had its own name, imagine that! ok, so "The channel Tunnel", ain't that cool, but at least i didn't have a werid 'outy' belly button. At least i 'my thing' that people knew about be was that i was big and lived on a farm (i didn't, it just the road it was on had lots of pot holes) it was kinda fun, this other kids 'thing' was a rumor was that his uncle was his dad, so in comparison, i was lucky with the flab and the farm.

I also had a girlfriend at the time, her name was Carly and we used to kiss in the playground, it was oh-so-cute, the other kids we're not so sure and liken my pre-teen smoochin' to 'Guerillas in the Mist', ah well, you can't win them all.

At the same time i acquired the nick name 'beef' which i didn't mind because there was another kid and his nickname was chunk, so i was rather happy with my lot (beef = crisps, OXO cubes and mummies sunday roast, chunk = cat sick). Again it was an affectionate name, which i may have actually picked for my self. (oh, dear oh dear, what was i thinking, surely i could have picked something cool like, 'Switch' or 'Ace' or something Rad, as we used to say.)

Not liking sport much as a kid, has developed into not bothering with much exercise as an adult, but very occasionally, i will go for five times in two weeks then get a cold, or go on holiday or something and forget all about going to the swimming pool and exercising which was sooo important in those two weeks. More recently, I have consumed many, many, curries during my short stint as a curry reviewer, which didn't really help the expanding buldge. But mostly, I am the way i am because i don't do any exercise, and my passion of drinking beers. Which means unless i change, one is poised to stay rotund for the rest of my years, and er perhaps earn myself a heart attack at 40, unless, of course, I do something about it! So here is my plan....

I will lose (positive thinking from the start eh!) 2 Stone = roughly 12.7 kg (just under 13 bags of sugar) in six months.

From March 10th to September 10th is 185 days or 26 weeks

currently 14.5 stone - 92 kg (ish)

means that I will have to lose 0.07 kg a day or 0.5 kg a week (half bag of sugar!)


Start - 92
end Wk 1 91.5 kg
end wk 2 91
end wk 3 90.5
end wk 4 90
end wk 5 89.5
end wk 6 89
end wk 7 88.5
end wk 8 88
end wk 9 87.5
end wk 10 87
end wk 11 86.5
end wk 12 86
end wk 13 85.5
end wk 14 85
end wk 15 84.5
end wk 16 84
end wk 17 83.5
end wk 18 83
end wk 19 82.5
end wk 20 82
end wk 21 81.5
end wk 22 81
end wk 23 80.5
end wk 24 80
end wk 25 79.5
endwk 26 79 (just under 12. 5 stone)

I will achieve this by going swimming twice a week and reducing the amount of booze and pizza i eat per week. EASY!

Wish me luck, I will need it!